Insurgent – Veronica Roth

I think I can stick to generally summarizing the first book, sans spoilers by saying, “There was a society designed to be perfect. Turns out it wasn’t perfect. Things fell apart.” Oh, heeeeey, YA Dystopian Fiction! Wazzzzaaaaaap?

Right then, that was fairly painless. Moving on.

After things stereotypically fell apart, the second book begins in a fire blaze of chaos and disorganized scandal as what used to be a perfectly ordered city begins to lick its wounds and attempt to make sense of the rubble.

Our heroes, Tris, Tobias and their merry band of marauding paradigm shifters, find themselves in way over their collectively defiant heads. Working with the forms of the previously established, now severely unstable factions, the survivors of the first book begin to rework their mob mental model of social structure.

This series, as I mentioned in my review of Divergent, is amazing for me, as a political science major, as it taps into the key pieces we hold on to as making up the perfect society. From candor to selflessness to kindness to bravery to intelligence, it highlights the things we cling to as a collective or sometimes individual panacea to create a better tomorrow.